Bus strip

ABSTRACT

A bus strip which can be mounted on an array of terminal posts merely by pushing the bus strip into mounting engagement with a desired plurality of terminal posts is disclosed. The bus strip is a one piece configuration having a central spine with a pair of wings radiating in opposite directions from one end of the spine. The spine is provided with a series of holes adjacent the junction of the spine and wings to mount the bus strip on an array of terminal posts, and the wings are contoured so as to spring load the strip against the terminal posts with three points of contact. The bus strip may also be provided with gaps in the wings and spine whereby contact with posts may be skipped as desired.

United States Patent [191 Iosue et al.

[ 1 Aug. 13, 1974 1 1 BUS STRIP [73} Assignee: Rogers Corporation,Rogers, Conn.

[22] Filed: Aug. 22, 1973 [21] Appl. No.: 390,439

[52] US. Cl. 339/19, 339/242, 339/256 C [51] Int. Cl H01! 31/08 [58]Field of Search 339/19, 22 B, 242, 256,

339/258, 273,277; 248/60; 211/89, 69.8; 24/81 H, 81 PC, 243 O Sullivan339/19 Hounanian et a1. 339/19 Primary Examiner-Bobby R. Gay AssistantE.raminerRobert A. Hafer 1 1 ABSTRACT A bus strip which can be mountedon an array of terminal posts merely by pushing the bus strip intomounting engagement with a desired plurality of terminal posts isdisclosed. The bus strip is a one piece configuration having a centralspine with a pair of wings radiating in opposite directions from one endof the spine. The spine is provided with a series of holes adjacent thejunction of the spine and wings to mount the bus strip on an array ofterminal posts, and the wings are contoured so as to spring load thestrip against the terminal posts with three points of contact. The busstrip may also be provided with gaps in the wings and spine wherebycontact with posts may be skipped as desired.

10 Claims, 5 Drawing Figures BUS STRIP BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Thisinvention relates to electrical bus strips. More particularly, thisinvention relates to electrical bus strips for interconnecting an arrayof terminal pins or terminal posts on devices such as terminal blocksand circuit boards.

In many environments, especially but not limited to the computerindustry, large numbers of electrical circuits are connected to circuitboards or terminal blocks having terminal posts leading to the variouscircuits. Interconnection between the terminal posts and variouscircuits is accomplished in a variety of fashions such as, for example,by wire wrap connecting. It is often desired or required tointerconnect; i.e., bus together; a plurality of terminal pins toprovide, e.g., a common power supply, common grounding, or circuitinterconnections. Typical prior art approaches to the bussing problemhave included the techniques of soldering a single conductor to each ofa desired series of terminal posts and wire wrapping a common wire to aseries of terminal posts. However, such prior art bussing approaches aretime consuming and thus relatively costly production operations since agreat deal of manual labor is required. Also, soldering and wirewrapping techniques inherently present the risk of achieving one or morepoor electrical connections. Suggestions have also been made in the artto provide fabricated connector buses. Examples of such fabricated busesin the prior art can be found in the US. Pats. to Hovnanian No.3,609,634, Walterscheid, No. 3,356,183, Sullivan,

No. 3,488,620, Sullivan, No. 3,582,864 and IBM Technical Bulletin Vol.14, No. 8 January I972. However, these prior fabricated bus devices havebeen of somewhat limited versatility, and some of them are not easilyadaptable to bussing patterns of posts, especially irregular patterns,as distinguished from bussing all of the posts in an array. Additionallymany of these fabricated bus connectors have the serious drawback ofrequiring insulating pads at the location of terminal posts which are tobe skipped.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The bus strip of the present invention is aone-piece device which can be mounted on an array of terminal pinsmerely by aligning openings in the bus with the desired terminal pinsand then pushing the bus down on the terminal pins. The bus strip has acentral spine with a pair of wings radiating from opposite sides of oneend of the spine. A series of holes is provided in the spine, preferablynear the juncture of the spine and the radiating wings, and these holesare positioned for mating engagement with contact pins or terminalposts. The spine and the wings can be provided with open spaces, butwhile still maintaining the mechanical structural integrity of the busstrip, so that connections can be skipped between alternate pins orbetween pins in any desired regular or irregular pattern, while stillpermitting use of just the one-piece bus strip.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING Referring to the drawings, wherein likeelements are numbered alike in the several figures:

FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a bus strip in accordance with thepresent invention mounted on a series of terminal posts on a terminalblock.

FIG. 2 is an end view of the mounted bus strip of FIG. I, viewed lookingat the left end of FIG. 1.

FIG. 3 is a perspective view of a modified configuration of the busstrip of the present invention with spaces being provided to skipconnection with various terminal pins.

FIG. 4 is a view, similar to the view of FIG. 2, of the bus strip ofFIG. 3.

FIG. 5 is a view taken along line 5-5 of FIG. 3.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Referring now to FIGS. 1 and 2,the bus strip 10 of the present invention is shown mounted on a row ofterminal pins 12 of a terminal block or circuit board 14. It will beunderstood that the terminal block 14 and the terminal pins 12 do notform part of the invention but are shown for purposes of illustratingthe environment in which the invention may be employed.

The bus strip, which is made from any suitable conducting material suchas copper, has a central spine 16 of general U-shaped configuration incross-section with a pair of wings l8l8 radiating from opposite sides ofthe open end of the Ushaped spine. The wings 18 are crimped or bent sothat the portion 20 immediately adjacent the spine is inclined towardthe spine, so as to form an included acute angle with the plane of thespine, and the other portion 22 of the wing is inclined in the oppositedirection. The junction or line of bend between the two angled portionsof each wing forms contact areas or surfaces 24 for establishingelectrical and mechanical contact between the bus strip and the terminalposts 12. A series of openings 26 are formed in spine 16, preferablyadjacent to the junction between the wings and the spine, and theseopenings are positioned to engage the terminal pins 12.

Mounting of the bus strip of the present invention is a particularlysimple and efficient operation. Openings 26 are aligned with the tops ofthe pins 12 on which the bus is to be mounted. and the bus is thenpushed down on the pins to any desired position at or above the terminalblock. The bus strip is proportioned so that the contact areas orsurfaces 24 are aligned with or overlap part of the openings 26. Thatis, wing portion 20 is inclined toward spine 16 to such a degree andamount that a line tangent to the surface 24 on each of wings l8 andperpendicular to a plane bisecting spine 16 will pass through opening26. This proportioning between the spine and the wings results in aspring loading action urging the contact surface 24 on each wing intocontact with one surface of the terminal pin while simultaneously urgingthe surface of opening 26 closest to the closed edge of the spine intocontact with the 0pposed surface of the terminal pin. Thus, thisproportioning results in a spring loaded mounting of the bus strip onthe terminal pins and provides three discrete contact areas between thebus strip and each pin being contacted.

FIG. I shows a configuration wherein the number of holes 26 is doublethe number of pins in any one row. This illustrates the versatility ofthe bus strip in that it can be used for pin patterns of differentspacings. Furthermore, bus strips can easily be fabricated for irregularpin patterns merely by changing the spacing between openings 26.

Referring now to FIG. 3, a modified version of the bus strip is shownwherein the wings 18 include only the first inclined portion 20. Thecontact areas 24 of the FIG. 3 embodiment are defined by the ends of thewing portions which bear against the terminal pin as shown in FIG. 4. Acomparison between FIGS. 2 and 4 shows that the arrangement of FIG. 2has larger contact areas 24 resulting from the bend or junction linebetween the wing sections. The contact areas of the embodiment of FIGS.3 and 4 can be increased by contouring the contact areas 24 to a roundconfiguration or a flat surface parallel to the contact pins. Theconfiguration of the device shown in FIGS. 3 and 4 is proportioned as isthe FIG. 2 embodiment so that the contact areas 24 on the opposed wingsoverlap the opening 26 so as to urge the surfaces of openings 26adjacent the closed end of the spine into contact with as sociatedterminal pins thus forming a three point contact with the terminal pins.

The FIG. 3 embodiment, and particularly as shown in FIG. 5, possesses anadditional feature of the invention which permits the bus strip to befabricated to suit bussing requirements wherein one or more pins in arow are to be skipped. As illustrated in FIGS. 3 and 5, the spine andwings may be formed in a toothed or serrated configuration with spaces28 and 30 separating spine segments 1616 and wing segments l8l8,respectively. These spaces are formed by parts of the spine and wings atdesired places so as to form the spaced apart sections of the spine andwings while still retaining aunitary and integral bus strip. Theconfiguration of FIGS. 3-5 is particularly versatile in that it permitsthe use of the bus strip for interconnecting any desired irregularpattern of terminal pins in a row by leaving open spaces, i.e., thespaces 28 and 30, at the location of the pins to be skipped.Furthermore, it will be noted that the location and sizing of thespacings at the pins to be skipped is such that a complete absence ofcontact between the bus strip and the pins to be skipped is assured, theopenings being larger than the pin to be skipped, thus eliminating theneed for the use of insulating pads or any other kind of insulation onthe bus strip at the location of the pins to be skipped.

As will be apparent, the feature discussed with respect to theembodiment of FIGS. 3-5 whereby spaces are provided in the spine andwings to skip pin contact can also be effected with the embodiment ofFIGS. 1 and 2 by providing the desired spacings in the spine and in bothof the wing portions 20 and 22. As will also be apparent, the spine canbe shaped in a V or otherwise. Alternatively, the bus strip can befabricated, such as by extrusion, so that the spine 16 is in one flatpiece.

While preferred embodiments have been shown and described, variousmodifications and substitutions may be made thereto without departingfrom the spirit and scope of the invention. Accordingly, it is to beunderstood that the present invention has been described by way ofillustration and not limitation.

What is claimed is:

1. A bus strip for mounting on an array of terminal pins forelectrically interconnecting pins in the array, the .strip including:

a spine section having a plurality of spaced apart openings therein formounting on an array of terminal pins;

a pair of wings extending in opposite directions from one end of saidspine section, at least a part of each of said wings overlapping part ofsaid spine; and

contact surface areas on said wings aligned with said openings in saidspine whereby the bus strip is spring loaded into engagement at threespaced apart points along the length of terminal pins at said contactsurfaces and the periphery of said spaced openings when mounted on anarray of terminal pins.

2. A bus strip as in claim 1 wherein:

each of said wings includes a first section inclined in a direction fromsaid one end of the spine toward the other end thereof and a secondsection extending in the opposite direction from said first section.

3. The bus strip as in claim 2 wherein:

the junction of said first and second wing sections defines said contactsurface areas.

4. A bus strip as in claim 2 wherein:

said first wing section is inclined with respect to said spine to forman acute included angle therebetween.

5. A bus strip as in claim 1 wherein:

said spine section is composed of a plurality of spaced apart segments;and 1 said wings are composed of a plurality of spaced apart segmentsaligned with said spaced apart segments of said spine section, the.spacings between segments in each of said wings being approximatelyequal to the spacing between corresponding aligned segments of saidspine section.

6. A bus strip including:

a spine section of generally U-shaped configuration having a closedfirst end with legs extending to a second end, each of said legs havinga plurality of spaced apart openings therein aligned with correspondingopenings in the other of said legs;

a pair of wings extending in opposite direction from said legs at saidsecond end, at least a part of each of said wings overlapping part ofsaid spine; and

contact surface areas on said wings aligned with said openings in saidlegs of said spine so that a line tangent to a contact surface area andperpendicular to a plane bisecting said spine will pass through saidaligned openings, whereby the bus strip is spring loaded into engagementat three spaced apartpoints along the length of terminal pins at saidcontact surfaces and the periphery of said spaced openings when mountedon an array of terminal pins.

7. A bus strip as in claim 6 wherein:

each of said wings includes a first section inclined in a direction fromsaid one end of the spine toward the other end thereof and a secondsection extending in the opposite direction from said first section.

8. The bus strip as in claim 7 wherein:

the junction of said first and second wing sections defines said contactsurface areas.

9. A bus strip as in claim 7 wherein:

said first wing section is inclined with respect to said spine to forman acute included angle with a plane bisecting said spine.

ments of said spine section, the spacings between segments in each ofsaid wings being approximately equal to the spacings betweencorresponding aligned segments of said spine section.

1. A bus strip for mounting on an array of terminal pins forelectrically interconnecting pins in the array, the strip including: aspine section having a plurality of spaced apart openings therein formounting on an array of terminal pins; a pair of wings extending inopposite directions from one end of said spine section, at least a partof each of said wings overlapping part of said spine; and contactsurface areas on said wings aligned with said openings in said spinewhereby the bus strip is spring loaded into engagement at three spacedapart points along the length of terminal pins at said contact surfacesand the periphery of said spaced openings when mounted on an array ofterminal pins.
 2. A bus strip as in claim 1 wherein: each of said wingsincludes a first section inclined in a direction from said one end ofthe spine toward the other end thereof and a secoNd section extending inthe opposite direction from said first section.
 3. The bus strip as inclaim 2 wherein: the junction of said first and second wing sectionsdefines said contact surface areas.
 4. A bus strip as in claim 2wherein: said first wing section is inclined with respect to said spineto form an acute included angle therebetween.
 5. A bus strip as in claim1 wherein: said spine section is composed of a plurality of spaced apartsegments; and said wings are composed of a plurality of spaced apartsegments aligned with said spaced apart segments of said spine section,the spacings between segments in each of said wings being approximatelyequal to the spacing between corresponding aligned segments of saidspine section.
 6. A bus strip including: a spine section of generallyU-shaped configuration having a closed first end with legs extending toa second end, each of said legs having a plurality of spaced apartopenings therein aligned with corresponding openings in the other ofsaid legs; a pair of wings extending in opposite direction from saidlegs at said second end, at least a part of each of said wingsoverlapping part of said spine; and contact surface areas on said wingsaligned with said openings in said legs of said spine so that a linetangent to a contact surface area and perpendicular to a plane bisectingsaid spine will pass through said aligned openings, whereby the busstrip is spring loaded into engagement at three spaced apart pointsalong the length of terminal pins at said contact surfaces and theperiphery of said spaced openings when mounted on an array of terminalpins.
 7. A bus strip as in claim 6 wherein: each of said wings includesa first section inclined in a direction from said one end of the spinetoward the other end thereof and a second section extending in theopposite direction from said first section.
 8. The bus strip as in claim7 wherein: the junction of said first and second wing sections definessaid contact surface areas.
 9. A bus strip as in claim 7 wherein: saidfirst wing section is inclined with respect to said spine to form anacute included angle with a plane bisecting said spine.
 10. A bus stripas in claim 6 wherein: said spine section is composed of a plurality ofspaced apart segments; and said wings are composed of a plurality ofspaced apart segments aligned with said spaced apart segments of saidspine section, the spacings between segments in each of said wings beingapproximately equal to the spacings between corresponding alignedsegments of said spine section.